Virginia Woolf: The Voyage Out

14. Chapter XIV (continued)

"They want to shut up," he said. "My advice is that you should tell Oliver and Perrott to-morrow that you've made up your mind that you don't mean to marry either of them. I'm certain you don't. If you change your mind you can always tell them so. They're both sensible men; they'll understand. And then all this bother will be over." He got up.

But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright eager eyes, in the depths of which he thought he detected some disappointment, or dissatisfaction.

"Good-night," he said.

"There are heaps of things I want to say to you still," she said. "And I'm going to, some time. I suppose you must go to bed now?"

"Yes," said Hewet. "I'm half asleep." He left her still sitting by herself in the empty hall.

"Why is it that they won't be honest?" he muttered to himself as he went upstairs. Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed? What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one's own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. It was dimly lighted, but sufficiently for him to see a figure in a bright dressing-gown pass swiftly in front of him, the figure of a woman crossing from one room to another.